Regardless of whether you call them sweaters or jumpers, good knitwear is worthy of your care. When you treat them well, knit garments can keep you warm for many years. (In fact, I have a number of sweaters that are over three decades old!)
Knitwear is surprisingly durable, but it does wear out over time, especially at the elbows.
One way to mend knitwear is by darning. Darning is a technique to create a newly woven surface over a hole or worn section of a garment with thread or yarn. If done in the same color as the knitwear, the darned area can look so alike the original that it becomes almost invisible. On the other hand, you can also make decorative patterns to stand out over the original knit.
Unfortunately, darning requires time and patience, as well as practice for the job to turn out well.
So here is a much easier alternative: patching. Patching is a simple and quick way to mend the elbows of a sweater. Elbow patches are practical. They can also be decorative if you wish!
The instructions below describe the process that I followed to fix the holes in the elbows of one of my daughter’s wool sweaters with a pair of wool felt patches
Materials & Tools:
- Muumade’s Free Elbow Patch Template: Please download the file that corresponds to your printer’s paper size.
- US Letter size: Muumade_Craft_Blog_Free_Template_Elbow_Patch_USletter
- A4 size: Muumade_Craft_Blog_Free_Template_Elbow_Patch_A4
- 1 sheet of wool felt (1-2 mm thickness), large enough to cut out two elbow patches from it;
- Thickish sewing thread (I used Topstitching thread, with the thread size of Tex 100), in a color that matches the wool felt;
- A scrap piece of stretchy fabric (such as an old sock, T-shirt, etc.), large enough to cover over the holes and/or worn areas;
- Sewing thread to sew on the stretchy fabric patches, in any color;
- Fusible webbing, large enough for the two elbow patches;
- Iron;
- Basic sewing tools: a needle, sewing pins, scissors, measuring tape, etc.
Let’s Begin!
1. Print out Muumade’s Free Elbow Patch Templates. In the file, you will find two types of elbow patch templates, one rectangular and the other oval. Each shape comes in two sizes. Please select the shape and size you prefer. Make sure that the pattern you chose is large enough to cover over the holes and/or wear on the elbows of your knitwear. If it is too small you can print it at a larger scale. Cut out the selected template.
From stretchy fabric, cut out 2 patches that are smaller than the template but larger than the hole(s) and/or wear in your knitwear.
2. Select the sleeve of your knitwear which is the most worn. Turn that sleeve inside out.
Place one of the stretchy fabric patches over the damaged area of that sleeve.
Hold the patch in place with a couple of sewing pins.
3. Using the Whip Stitch (see below), sew the patch to the worn layer of the knitwear (the stitches are highlighted in pink in the image).
DO NOT sew the two layers of the sleeve together!
The stitches do not have to be small or neat; they will be covered over by the felt elbow patch later.
To make the Whip Stitch, start by inserting a needle at “a” from the inside of the sleeve (the sleeve is shown in gray and the stretchy patch in blue in the image). Then, insert the needle into the knitwear right next to the edge of the patch, and bring it back up from “b”. Continue in the same way as shown. In other words, make stitches in a spiral form to sew the two layers together all the way around the stretchy fabric patch.
4. Turn the sleeve right side out.
Carefully flatten out the edges of the hole or any stretched areas on the elbow of your knitwear.
If there aren’t any holes, skip to the next step.
If there is a hole, sew its edges to the stretchy patch, again using the Whip Stitch.
5. Turn the sleeve inside out again.
To reinforce the elbow area, make rough diagonal stitches all over the stretchy patch, sewing through the patch and one layer of the sleeve.
Repeat Steps 2 through 5 with the other sleeve.
Turn the knitwear right side out.
6. Trace the elbow patch template onto wool felt, twice. I used tailor’s chalk, but a tracing pencil or even a regular pencil should work as well (depending on the color of the felt).
7. Cut out the elbow patches from the felt.
Also cut out two ovals from fusible webbing, slightly smaller than the patches.
Follow the instructions of your fusible webbing to iron it onto one side of the felt patches.
8. Put your arm through one of the sleeves of your knitwear. Measure the distance between the edge of the sleeve and your elbow, as indicated by the black line in the image.
This distance will be used in the next step to place the patch on the sleeve.
9. Remove the paper backing of the fusible webbing of one of your elbow patches.
Place that elbow patch onto one of the sleeves of your knitwear. Position it so that its center is at the distance from the edge of the sleeve that you measured in the previous step.
Again, follow the instructions of your fusible webbing to iron the elbow patch onto the knitwear.
Repeat with the second elbow patch, but carefully positioning it to make it an exact mirror image of the first.
10. The final step is to securely attach the felt elbow patches onto your knitwear with some decorative stitches called the Blanket Stitch (see below).
To make the Blanket Stitch, insert the needle from the inside of the sleeve at “a” (the sleeve is shown in gray and the felt patch is red in the image) and bring it up through the felt patch. Reinsert the needle into the knitwear at the edge of the patch, at “b”. Bring the needle back up at “c” to catch the thread between “a” and “b”. Then reinsert it back into the patch and the knitwear at “d”. Again, bring the needle back at at “e”, and thus continue until you sew all the way around the elbow patch.
Congratulations! Your old garment has been mended and it might even have a new look. I hope that it will continue to keep you warm for many more years!
Now that you have finished one mending job, you may be interested in trying some of the following as well:
Happy mending!